A Dance to the Music of Time (10 of 12) - Book review

 

Books Do Furnish a Room, Anthony Powell’s tenth book in his series A Dance to the Music of Time was published in 1971; my copy attests to it being reprinted eight times (in 1981) and the book is still in print. (I read the previous book The Military Philosophers in May 2019).

Like all its predecessors, it’s narrated in the first person by Nick Jenkins; this time he covers the post-Second World War period of austerity. I certainly liked the title – having over thirty shelves crammed with books!

The book title derives from the cognomen Books-do-furnish-a-room Bagshaw given to a journalist of that surname: ‘Bagshaw’s employment at the BBC lasted only a few years. There were plenty of other professional rebels there, not to mention [Communist] Party Members’ (p37). There were two variants on his acquiring the sobriquet: one, while in his cups, he overturned a full bookcase of books on himself and made the observation, ‘Books do furnish a room’; two, he made the observation at the moment of consummating a sexual encounter in the lady’s husband’s book-lined study; she later told someone that she considered the remark lacking in sensibility.

Bagshaw becomes the general editor of the left-leaning magazine Fission; Nick acts as reviews editor and Kenneth Widmerpool, now a Labour MP, joins the team to write about politics and economics. The owner of the magazine is left-wing publisher Quiggin who ‘had lost interest writing. Instead, he now identified himself, body and soul, with his own firm’s publications, increasingly convinced – like not a few publishers – that he had written them all himself’ (p125). Quiggin even considered he had a right to alter the prose of ‘his’ authors without consultation. One author, as well as others, objected – X Trapnel. ‘These differences of opinion might have played a part in causing Quiggin – again like many publishers – to develop a detestation of authors as a tribe’ (p126).

Jenkins observes how the aftermath of the war affected individuals: ‘The war had washed ashore all sorts of wrack of sea, on all sorts of coasts. In due course, as the waves receded, much of this flotsam was to be refloated, a process to continue for several years, while the winds abated. Among the many individual bodies sprawled at intervals on the shingle, quite a lot resisted the receding tide. Some just carried on life where they were on the shore; others – the more determined – crawled inland’ (p140).

Trapnel was self-obsessed, and always seemed to act a part, the roles varying depending on whoever he was dealing with; whether that was Widmerpool or his butterfly wife, Pamela. He was a bit of a fantasist as well. And attractive to women…

Yet again Powell rarely lingers on Nick’s own marriage: ‘Not so very long after that evening, Isobel gave birth to a son’ (p104). He doesn’t even name the boy!

Hitting hard times, Trapnel ends up in a run-down part of the city, living in squalor: ‘… but buildings already tumbledown had now been further reduced by bombing. The neighbourhood looked anything but flourishing’ (p203).

Post-war paper shortages, artistic temperament disagreements, the squalid affair of Trapnel combined to ensure the demise of Fission.

As ever, the characters keep the pages turning. Two more books left to read in the sequence.

Hear, hear!

I was looking forward to watching the 5-part dramatization of Len Deighton’s 1978 novel, SS-GB, which I’d read and enjoyed many years ago. 

Unfortunately, the BBC chose to schedule it in conflict with an ITV series I’m already watching, The Good Karma Hospital. The BBC does this a lot; it doesn’t need to, since it isn’t really competing for paying viewers (or advertising space). So, I consoled myself with the thought that I’d eventually buy the DVD of SS-GB.

Now, I might not bother. There have been so many reports from a variety of sources that the director is an advocate of the Mumbling School of Drama. I won't surrender!

Considering this series is likened to a noir detective drama, I’d have thought the director would have seen the old noir movies featuring Bogart, Mitchum, O’Brien, Lake, Cagney, Robinson, Raft, Lorre, and Duryea to name a few. These had atmosphere, but also good diction (even when mangled American!), and the music never smothered the dialogue.

This is only the latest example of a number of recent productions that I have decided not to watch. I recall some time ago watching an episode of the new Dr Who; at a critical juncture, the good Doctor was making a dramatic announcement, but it was drowned out by the foreground music. I gave up on that series.

SS-GB is directed by Philipp Kadelbach and stars several German actors who spoke their native language on set and on screen, with subtitles. Great authenticity. Interestingly, some viewers commented that they found it easier to understand the Germans than anyone mumbling in English. A number had to resort to subtitles to comprehend what was being mumbled by the English-speakers.

The day after the transmission, a BBC spokesman said they “will look at the sound levels on the programme in time for the next episode.” You’d have thought that somebody might have considered doing that before transmission, considering that there have been other mumbling issues for the BBC involving Jamaica Inn, the crime series Quirke, and Happy Valley.

There’s no issue with other series, such as Game of Thrones, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and Murdoch Mysteries, for example, all of which have dark themes and an international cast; even the Dothraki is intelligible in Game of Thrones!

At least I can hear what all the international cast of actors are saying in The Good Karma Hospital. That’s good karma, indeed.

Authors: Don’t expect the BBC to film your book

Here we go again. Paucity of original thought.

The BBC is spending licence payers’ money on filming Agatha Christie novels that have been filmed just a few times already. Last year’s And Then There Were None was very successful (altering the storyline in the process). Next up, The ABC Murders – which features Hercule Poirot and was done very well with David Suchet in 1992. They’re also going to film Ordeal by Innocence, memorably starring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple in 2007, though admittedly the story did not feature her character; still it was also a major feature film in 1985. And then there’s Witness for the Prosecution, a two-parter that will feature the always watchable Toby Jones – though there was a feature film in 1957 (and another expected big screen version in the next year or so).  All of the foregoing can be obtained on DVD.

Following the lead of And Then There Were None, it is said that these latest versions are ‘a new way of interpreting Christie for a modern audience’.

A similar excuse is offered when yet another version is released for an Austen, Bronte, or Dickens book: ‘It’s for a new generation.’

And the BBC boss Charlotte Moore says this run of Christie dramas would ‘continue BBC1’s special relationship as the home of Agatha Christie in the UK.’(sic)  Where was she when Marple and Poirot were being aired on ITV: Marple 2004-2013/Poirot 1989-2013. Clearly, at some expense the BBC has acquired the Agatha Christie rights. Spendthrifts. Shame on them.

In truth it’s laziness, mining seams that have already been explored. Far easier to work on old mines  than discover new workings.

Don’t these dramatists, producers and directors read?

Go to a bookshop, or if there aren’t any of those in the town, go to the general library (though there may not be many of those around either); all right, go online, key in ‘books/murder mystery/’ and you’ll be spoilt for choice.

I’m sure thousands of licence payers would happily recommend some of their favourite books to be filmed for the first time.  

One response could be: Well, Hollywood has been doing it for years, so why not the BBC? The difference is, Hollywood gambles their own money, not licence-payers’ fees. The BBC airs enough repeats anyway, and to all intents and purposes these remakes are not far removed from that!

And while the new Poldark series is hugely popular, it is a remake. The author Winston Graham is one of my many favourites. If they want to film a period piece, I’d recommend his Cordelia, a superb novel. There are other historical novels from his pen worthy of transfer to the small screen too. And countless other authors, alive and dead. Sigh. Sadly, that takes imagination… Yes, Hilary Mantel has done well, and Philippa Gregory, so it’s not all bad, granted. Yet there are so many more on those library shelves!

Writing – research - Beyond the Oxus

Most writers need to do some research for their books. That research shouldn’t be simply to insert blocks of text because it’s interesting, in the manner of Dan Brown. It should be used to get a feel for a place, a time, a people. There are countless books available to delve into to obtain details about the flora, fauna and culture, to lend credibility to the fiction. We’re not copying slavishly, or plagiarizing swathes of text, but ‘getting the feel’ to convey the ‘reality’.

My latest work in progress, set in Afghanistan in 1979-1980 has involved a huge amount of research reading. Yes, I’ve travelled through Pakistan and up the Khyber, but I haven’t been to Afghanistan itself, though that land has held a fascination as long back as the release of the film, King of the Khyber Rifles!

One of the books I’ve read is Beyond the Oxus by Monica Whitlock (2002). As a BBC correspondent for central Asia, Whitlock has gleaned a great deal from eye-witnesses. It’s a fascinating history of the central Asians, the people of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Inevitably, the book also concerns Afghanistan.

Besides personal accounts, Whitlock gives us fascinating history of a relatively unknown region.

Here, in 973, was born one of the greatest Muslim scholars, Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad, called Biruni, thankfully. ‘His study of the rotation of the earth was revolutionary. He calculated longitude and latitude, observed solar and lunar eclipses in detail, and was an early cartographer, mathematician, physicist, geographer and anthropologist. He spoke Aramaic, Greek and Sanskrit as well as Arabic and Persian.’ (p14)

Another important figure was ‘Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa, who disseminated through his treatise written in Baghdad in about 825, the Indian counting system that included decimal places and the concept of zero. This system reached Muslim Spain about a hundred and fifty years later, his treatise being translated into Latin in 1120 by an Englishman, Robert of Chester, who visited Spain to study mathematics…’ It took some seven hundred years after that treatise before the concept was widely used in Europe. He brought us the word ‘algebra’, not to mention Arabic ‘sefr’ which gave us ‘cipher’ and ‘zero’. (p15)

There are several tragic stories about lives ruined. One individual is Damulla Sharif, who fled to Afghanistan in 1927, along with almost half the population of his town. Some seven years later he chanced returning and crossed the border, but he was caught. ‘Before he was taken away, he made a hurried bonfire of his hundred-book library, rather than give them the pleasure. He spent the next twenty years in and out of prison, accused at one point of writing “anti-Soviet poetry”. By the time he was finally released in 1955 he could neither see nor walk properly, and was tormented by the memory of his burnt books. He resumed his studies none the less…’ He worked as a night watchman and in his free time taught and wrote poetry. (p97)

When Ella Ivanova was two, ‘Stalin ordered the evacuation of her village… about 450 miles south-east of Moscow, a solidly German corner of Russia ever since the first pioneers arrived at the invitation of Catherine the Great…’  Ella heard from her mother and sister what happened. They had 24 hours to get out, leaving their cow, and everything but the clothes they wore. They killed a pig, cut it up and took it with them. They were taken by train to Siberia, and her father was put in a concentration camp while her mother brought up four children in a one-room hut. Her mother was almost killed in a fight over a radish. When their teacher left, the replacement never arrived, she was eaten by wolves on the road. ‘Wolves hardly ever attack humans, and it tells you how hungry even they were.’

After Stalin’s death the family was reunited and headed for Tajikistan to find work. ‘We found a paradise on earth here!’ (pp99/100)

Stalin forcibly moved hundreds of thousands of families, many to Soviet Central Asia, presumably for fear that they would collaborate with the Nazis or the Japanese. Indeed, ‘compulsory migration had begun in the 1920s, as a means of moving labour to where it was needed.’  In order to increase the production of cotton, whole villages of Tajiks were moved to the plains, a forced migration that lasted from 1952 until the 1970s. Remarkably, one man hid his small library under the hay in the cattle shed and even when forcibly migrated, he took his books with him. Many had to construct their living quarters, families perished and starvation was normal; the workers didn’t get paid for six years. ‘They were set to work in the plantations in one of the hottest inhabited places on earth, and forbidden to return to their mountain homes for fifteen years.’ (p109)

This is but a very brief overview/review of an interesting book that takes the history up to 2002.  What shines through is the indomitable spirit of people to surmount the depredations of despots, to survive in spite of incredible hardship throughout a turbulent history.

Recommended reading. 

A shorter version of this review has been posted on Amazon.

Writing – market - BBC drama

The BBC’s Writersroom has opened its window for unsolicited TV and film drama script submissions. 

The window closes on 24 September 2015. UK residents only!

 

Wikipedia commons

In this link here see the sub-section ‘submission windows’

Do not submit a first draft or a work in progress. Make it the best you possibly can. This is a highly competitive market.

 

More details here

Episode series. Send the first full pilot episode of a series and a brief outline of 1-3 pages of future episodes.

Serial. Send the first episode and a brief outline of 1-3 pages of the remaining serial narrative.

Single drama. Send the complete script.

In the website’s ‘Terms and Conditions’ you will find a wealth of advice, for instance:

‘Length

‘We accept scripts that are at least 30 minutes long, which is a fair length of time to assess a writer's work – it's extremely hard to judge a writer's abilities with a view to BBC broadcast slots if their work is shorter than this… The minute-to-a-page measure of classic screenplay format is a useful rule-of-thumb, but isn't a cast iron formula as it ultimately depends on the style of the piece. Generally speaking a half-hour sitcom would come in between 30 and 35 pages, an hour-long drama between 50-70 pages, and a feature film between 70-120 pages. The best way to judge the length of your script is to time yourself reading it, allowing extra space for action. A group reading or performance is even more useful since each reader, like an actor, may deliver their lines of dialogue at different paces...

‘Script Room reading process

‘BBC Writersroom employs professional script readers to assess all the submitted scripts. They sift the scripts by reading at least the first ten pages. All eligible scripts are considered in this way. If a script doesn't sufficiently hook our attention at the sift stage, it will not be considered further... If a script hooks our reader’s attention, it will progress to the second sift where the first 20-30 pages of scripts are read by another reader. If a script is long-listed it will progress to the full read and feedback stage of the process, where a third reader reads the script and provides feedback.  The reader may then recommend that the script is shortlisted, which means that it will be read and discussed by senior members of the BBC Writersroom team and the writer will be considered for further development.’

Also in the ‘Terms and Conditions’ is a comprehensive bullet point list showing what they do not accept, so make a point of reading this too. And one of the conditions is that they only accept scripts from those resident in the UK.

The website also contains a large library of scripts to browse, so you can see how they’re formatted and how the various writers deal with narrative and dialogue.

Good luck!

 

 

Critic’s Strange dislike of Magic show

I’m halfway through reading Susanna Clarke’s debut tome, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) and I find that there are many things to enjoy in this book, so far. I’ll write a review when I’ve finished it. 

I had intended reading the book before the TV series, but have fallen behind due to other demands on my time. As it happens, due to other commitments I’d miss at least two of the seven episodes anyway, so I will settle for watching the DVD in the future.

Strange & Norrell - Bertie Carvel & Eddie Marsan

 

Briefly, the story begins in 1806 in an alternative universe, where Magic is real, though none has been reported in England for 300 years. There are plenty of theoretical magicians who study books and even write them, but no physical practitioners – that is, until Mr Norrell decides to step forward and use magic to help his country against Napoleon.

The Daily Mail’s TV reviewer Christopher Stevens has savaged the first two episodes of the series. In his first review, two column inches of ten bemoaned the fact that Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell wasn’t Poldark – ‘no damsels with heaving bosoms.’ The title of the review gives it away, I suppose – ‘I was hoping for TV magic… but got a Harry Potter rip-off.’ I know, the columnists don’t always write the title that appears in the newspaper. But that’s what Mr Stevens says in his text. He calls Susanna Clarke’s book a ‘mishmash of folklore and historical fantasy… a J.K. Rowling rip-off.’ The second review referred to ‘turgid dialogue’ from the book.

I’ve encountered this attitude before. Critics bring their own expectations to a piece of work – whether book or film – and then rail against the piece because it didn’t meet those expectations. That’s just misguided reviewing, in my opinion. The only similarity between Poldark and Norrell is that they both take place during the Napoleonic wars – the former is historical fiction while the latter is fantasy fiction.

What is unforgiveable in these two reviews are the comments about a book Mr Stevens clearly hasn’t read. The only two similarities between Potter and Norrell are that they involve magic and are published by Bloomsbury. Clarke began work on Norrell in the early 1990s, and spent ten years working on it – and the depth of knowledge and research shows.

Sometimes I’ve read a review of a book or film and wondered if I’d read or watched the same work, since the reviewer seemed to come away with such a different conception. Not everyone will like everything; that stands to reason. We're all entitled to our opinion - though I'd like to think that meant 'informed opinion'. But if a critic is to employ reason, then they should be reasonable in their statements. Throwing around an accusation of ‘rip-off’ is far from reasonable.

Attempting to bring to the screen a 1,000-page book can’t be easy, especially when there are about 200 footnotes! Steve Kloves (and Michael Goldenberg) did remarkably well with the Harry Potter scripts, particularly the longer books; Norrell’s scriptwriter Peter Harness has managed to harness (sic) much of the original book, though inevitably Clarke’s pastiche treatment and wit are not so evident, but the episodes don’t suffer for that.

Ignore the critic and enjoy the TV series for what it is: a laudable translation to screen from a fantastic work of original fiction.

***

Note: Susanna Clarke is working on a new book; however, you can read a collection of her short stories set in the same alternate universe, featuring some characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The book has just been released: The Ladies of Grace Adieu - the title of the story that started it all, really...

Writing – competition - 10th Anniversary BBC National Short Story Award

Open to UK residents and nationals who have a history of creative writing (i.e. you’ve been published professionally).

Prizes:

1^st - £15,000
2^nd - £3,000
3^rd, 4^th, 5^th - £500 each

Deadline: 25 February, 2015

Word-length – up to 8,000

Original and unpublished

Word document, 12pt font, double-spaced, without page numbers, front page included with the story title and word count; author’s name not to appear on the ms. Online entry preferred.

No fee.

Only one entry per writer.

Good luck!

See the website for full details: http://www.booktrust.org.uk/prizes/1

 

FFB - Steel Gods

Scott Grønmark has written (as Nick Sharman, nothing to do with author Mark Timlin’s fictional character) books such as The Cats, The Surrogate, Switch and Next. Steel Gods (1990), under his real name, was his last novel to be published and it isn’t strictly horror, unlike its predecessors. It’s more a blend of horror-sci-fi thriller. It’s a bit like Dennis Wheatley without the verbiage, fast-paced, unputdownable, with plenty of plot-twists to keep the pages turning.

David Cauley is the father of Anna, whose unusual powers and talents make her the target of two bitterly opposed factions. The realisation that there are people with remarkable earth-shaking powers unfolds gradually for David and the reader: people who shaped – and still shape – the world, for good or ill, who thirsted – and still thirst – for power, for dominion over lesser mortals: Gods, steely gods pitched against each other, seemingly heedless of who they hurt in their titanic struggle. You can believe the gods were (or are) like these!

Among those gods is James Lord, an American destined for the White House – if he can survive the conniving faction led by the sinister Dragon Man, Spear. The brooding menace of Spear permeates the pages, his presence is felt even when he is pages away from the text you’re reading. The villain’s two henchmen are almost as reprehensible, evil ignorant killers. Certain scenes may not be for the squeamish, but Grønmark has created characters about whom you care.

Some of the plot twists may seem inevitable and can be out-guessed, but you will still carry on reading because you care about the people: the twists and turns are always logical, hardly ever contrived or strained.

Good value, a good chilling read. It would probably make an edge-of-seat movie.

The blurb tells us that Grønmark is a ‘chilling new talent’ – and so he was (though he’d produced eight horror novels under a different name!). A pity that he chose not to write any novel since.

***

Scott Grønmark is a retired broadcaster, writer, and online and interactive TV exec who lives in a pleasant part of West London with his wife and son.

He was born in Norway and spent the first six years of his life there, mainly on Air Force bases. After his family moved to London he attended King's College School in Wimbledon, and then read Philosophy at Cambridge.

His first job was with the publisher, Academic Press, in Camden Town. He  swiftly moved to New English Library in Holborn - a far racier proposition. He wrote some genre novels for them in his spare time, and after four years had enough saved to become a full-time writer. He did that for seven years, publishing nine novels in all.

 
Eventually, he ran out of ideas and, thanks to a friend, got a job with BBC Radio 2's John Dunn Show, which led to a research job with BBC TV’s Nine O'Clock News, where he ended up as a producer. He spent ten years with BBC News & Current Affairs, finishing as the editor of a live BBC2 political talk show, Midnight Hour.

The above bio is taken from his blog: http://scottgronmark.blogspot.com.es/p/biography.html